Almost all beekeepers learn from trial and error. I know I have. I’ll
admit that I’ve made more than my share of mistakes when dealing with swarm
traps. Learn from the messes I’ve made and maybe you can avoid yourself some
grief.
My preferred method of getting new hives is through catching swarms with
trap hives, as I explained in my previous
post. Swarms are plentiful in Honduras and easily caught. Bait boxes work
very well.
However, I prefer to use top
bar hives for my beekeeping and I
have to work with ornery
Africanized bees. I don’t have all the conveniences in Honduras that I would
have back in the United States. These issues have probably caused me to have
more than my share of bad experiences.
So, here are some things that I have learned and that you should maybe
keep in mind.
Wear a veil. Or
at the very least have it on hand.
Sealing up the entrances on my trap hives is usually an easy process—I just
puff a bit of smoke and stuff the sponge in it. It’s sealed and ready to move.
Because of this, I often don’t want to bother with a suit or even a veil. It
doesn’t matter that my bees are Africanized. The trap hives are easier to carry
without having to put on the cumbersome equipment.
But just about the time you think everything is good the sponge gets
knocked out of the entrance or the bees find a hole someplace. You start getting
zapped. And worse yet, since it’s night, the bees crawl and cling to you. They won’t
simply fly away. You take some back with you to the truck—and they usually end
up stinging you just as you’re taking off your veil or suit.
So I usually tie on my simple mosquito net string veil. I’ll keep it
pulled down comfortably around my neck but it’s easy to pull up if necessary.
Take the smoker.
You never know if you’re going to need it. You can’t trust all the bees will be
inside, even though that’s what you hope for. More times than never there are
some outside the entrance that need a little coaxing to enter. Other times
there’s a lot of them hanging outside.
Remember the sponges.
Don’t forget to bring something to stop up the entrances (or enough in case
there are several traps you’re moving). I prefer pieces of sponge since it
seals the entrances nicely.
If I happen to forget them I can usually find some old plastic bags
lying around on the ground that work in an emergency. In a worst case scenario,
you use some grass or leaves (although I don’t trust them staying in the
entrance like other material).
Carry an extra sponge or two in your pocket. Too many times I go to
stuff one in the entrance and I drop it. It’s easier to pull another from your
pocket than to climb out of the tree for one.
And then also be careful that it doesn’t come unplugged. Be careful
about what it might brush against—even something like your leg. Again, there is
nothing worse than having the bees come out at night since they crawl and cling
to you.
Bring a feed sack for those leaky
boxes. I check the box for holes before hanging them. But
for whatever reason I end up getting some again.
Bringing along some big feed sacks was the solution. If I think there’s
going to be a problem with the bees coming out of the trap, I will slip it into
the bag and tie it shut. It’s extra insurance against having problems and gives
me a bit more peace of mind when moving them to the apiary.
My wife will sew one and a half feed sacks together to make the bag big
enough for my traps.
Bees
in a bag—the solution for a leaky trap hive.
Duct tape.
The fix it all (or maybe I should say “seal it all”).
Check the boxes for holes
before hanging them. It’s easier to fix those problems before bees move into the
box.
Otherwise use that duct tape. You could also bring along some plastic
bags for stuffing into smaller holes or cracks.
Move the swarm traps carefully. These
are top bar bait boxes that I use. The combs aren’t going to be inside a frame.
If the bees have had time to grow their nest, they are going to have combs of
new wax that could be heavy with brood. Fragile.
The new swarms will take some movement and swinging around, but it can’t
be excessive. If you bump it just right, you will have comb breakage. Watch out
for those tree roots or rocks that you might trip over. Set it down carefully
so it doesn’t tip (nothing is flat on the coffee
farm where I have an apiary).
Moving them in a vehicle can be tough, especially on the back roads of
Honduras. The roads have lots of ruts and lots of rocks. It doesn’t matter if
you go slow. There is lots of jarring. If a trap needs to be moved up to my coffee
farm apiary, I will actually ride in the back and hold the trap hive, trying to
cushion the jolts on the worst parts of the road.
I actually like to move them better with my scooter. I can strap two trap
hives easily to the back on a little platform I made. It’s easy to dodge ruts
and rocks and go more slowly to the apiary.
The
result of tripping on a rock.
Check for comb breakage. If
you think you had some combs break or collapse, try to get into the hive the
next day. It can be saved if you don’t wait too long. I usually see the combs
falling in such a way that most of the bees can crawl out from under them. I
normally see a minimal number of bees getting crushed. You might lose the queen
but if there is brood, the bees can raise another.
Get a headlamp.
Pick up one of those little LED flashlights that you can strap to your
forehead. It helps a lot to have both hands free. Otherwise have a small
penlight that you can maybe put in your mouth.
It also helps to have one with a red light. Bees can’t distinguish that
color. For them at night, it’s as if there isn’t even light.
Careful though with a normal white light. It will attract any bees that
have escaped. You might pick up a sting on your head.
Check the flashlight batteries.
There is nothing worse when you are out in the woods taking down a trap hive
and the batteries die. I learned this the hard way.
This was many years ago when my oldest son helped me take a trap full of
bees to an apiary I had just outside of town. It was maybe a 20-minute walk. We
hung the trap on a stick between the two of us, to avoid comb collapse and make
carrying it easier. We were in the field walking toward the other hives when my
flashlight started to die. It also started to drizzle, meaning the moon was
covered by clouds.
I decided to just leave it off to the side of the path and I would go
back early in the morning to deal with it. We got back to the gate of the field
and the flash light died completely. I couldn’t see a thing. I have terrible
night vision. Then the lights go out in town also. It’s now pitch black.
My son had better eyesight so he basically had to lead me. I remember
thinking that coming up on the road was a small bridge. I kept hoping we
wouldn’t go off to the side and down into the stream. We finally got to the
houses on the edge of town and stopped at the first little store where they had
a candle lit.
The lights came back on after about 20 more minutes and we got back
home.
Think twice about using cardboard
trap hives. They will work. And they are cheap. I’ve used
cardboard for the sides of the bait box to reduce weight. I stapled some
plastic to it in order to make it more rain proof.
After a certain time, however, the bees will begin to chew it up. I
remember one trap hive where the bees completely chewed up the cardboard,
leaving just the plastic. It was kind of unnerving moving that one, knowing I
could have easily poked a hole through the plastic and let some angry bees out.
Don’t keep the bees in the trap
hive for too long. Although my swarm boxes can usually hold a new colony
for three or even four weeks, there is a limit. The box is not that big and if
the colony grows enough they will want to swarm.
Queen
cells. This is what happens when you keep the new colony in the swarm trap for
two months instead of transferring the bees to a permanent box sooner. The colony
built up big enough and fast enough to where it swarmed again.
Get permission/advise the
landowner. Permission is just common courtesy. But after you
have that permission try to let the landowner know you will be out there
checking the traps.
My wife and I went out one night to take down and move a bunch of trap
hives—around 12 of them. At one of the spots, I stopped by the owner’s house
and let the wife know that I would be coming back at night to take the bees out
of the tree. She said that wasn’t a problem. The problem was that she didn’t
tell her husband.
I’m just getting the trap hive to the ground when three people showed
up, one carrying a shotgun (or maybe just a 22). He wanted to know what was
going on out there in his pasture. Right at that time some bees started to
escape. “Get back. The bees are coming out,” thinking more about his safety than
the fact he had a gun in his hand to use on me.
It all turned out fine after I was able to explain the situation.
Make a knot that is easy to
untie. If you can’t get the knot untied, you end up cutting
the rope. Then you have the risk of not having enough sting to easily lower the
bees to the ground. (This also implies keeping a small knife in your pocket.) Or
worse, you can’t see decently since it’s at night and you cut the wrong string.
The trap hive then just about falls out of the tree.
Protect the trap from birds and
mice. They like my trap hives as much as the bees do. I now
nail/staple some half inch wire mesh over the entrances.
Nail this on the inside so the sponge can still be stuffed in the
entrance to seal up the trap.
The
result of a bird wanting to use my box for its nest.
Carry the heavy traps between two
people. This is especially useful if you have to take them
any distance. I slip a long stick under the hanging/handle stings. One person
is on either end of the stick. Sometimes I will even put two traps on the
stick. It is also easier to buffer the jars to the traps this way.
Trap hive locations need to be
planned. Don’t put them too close to someone’s house if you
know they may be uncomfortable with the potential bees. But other times you
have no choice.
I once noticed bees flying around the eaves of my house like they were
checking it out for a new nesting site. So I decided to hang up a trap hive
under the roof. Better they move into that and not the roof itself.
It probably went like that for four, maybe five days. Finally, the swarm
arrived, but right as the neighbors where breaking the piñata for their granddaughter’s
birthday. Just across the fence, maybe 60 feet away. Everyone ran into the
house and then I had the neighbor knocking on my door.
After I explained what was happening everything was good. I even set up
the ladder and got right next to the bees to show them there was nothing to
worry about.
It’s
bad timing when the swarm arrives just as the next-door neighbors are breaking
the piñata for their granddaughter’s birthday.
Choose carefully how you hang the
trap hive in the tree. It has to come down eventually It’s a lot more
difficult when it’s full of bees and you have to do this at night.
So envision how that will be at night before you decide to hang it.
Hang it in a place where it is easy to get at it. Make sure you’re not
going to put yourself in danger of falling. Make sure you can easily reach the
entrances to stuff them up. Make sure it’s going to be easy to lower the bait
box down.
I mentioned in my previous
post about setting a trap hive in the crotch of a tree. It was a nice
stable spot but the weight of the big swarm that moved in wedged it there. The
tree also had a slippery-type of bark and you had to keep one hand on a branch
to avoid falling.
It was a bit of a nightmare to lift it up and out of the crotch and down
to the ground. We actually ended up breaking all the combs and we lost the
hive.
The
trap hive wedged in the crotch of a tree.
Notice
the bars on the left with the yellow wax from the trap hive that had the comb
breakage. They ended up going into the other new hive next door.
--Tom
What tidbits of information can you add for dealing with trap hives?
Please share with a comment.
